The Badass Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie That Could've Been

Where Michael Bay and co. went wrong

Despite existing principally to sell toys to children, the looming Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (in theaters August 8) has already caused plenty of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing among adult TMNT devotees. Call us emotionally stunted, if you must. But we're bracing ourselves for disappointment, and for good reason, boy howdy. The latest evidence: the generic EDM/hip-hop crossover theme song from the likes of Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Kill the Noise, Madsonik.

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The TMNTtrailers show Japanese master assassin Oroku Saki, aka the Shredder, whitewashed into a Xerox of Willem Dafoe's demented businessman Norman Osborn from 2002's Spider-Man. At this point, it's unfair to assume anything about Megan Fox or Johnny Knoxville's performances as April O'Neil and the voice of Leonardo, respectively. But neither exactly has a spotless history of career choices. As the leader of the Jackass gang, Knoxville periodically let his friends kick him in the balls, which incidentally, the pragmatic and tactical Leonardo would never allow. Fox agreed to star in Jonah Hex. Could TMNT turn into another boot to the scrotum for Knoxville, and another Hex for Fox?

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Oh, and yet another bad omen — at some point in the film, Donatello makes a face like this.

Luckily, even if this movie really, really sucks, odds are it won't embarrass the Turtles any more than the all-singing, all-dancing, barely-veiled advertisement for Pizza Hut that was the Coming Out of Their Shells concert tour. Or Vanilla Ice's inexplicable and highly-questionable appearance in 1991's TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze. Or maybe even that time the Turtles teamed up with the Power Rangers... Actually, to hell with all of you, I kind of liked the Power Rangers crossover.

Amazingly, the earliest rendering of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo (later to be correctly spelled Michelangelo) gets about as serious as a tale of anthropomorphic reptilian warriors possibly could. In 1984's independently published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird send the heroes on a Tarantino-worthy, blood-frenzied quest for retribution against Shedder and his Foot Clan minions. Amid undisguised homages to (or, dare we say, rip-offs of) Frank Miller's groundbreaking noir work with Daredevil, the Turtles offer their enemies swift deaths by stabbing, as opposed to the cornball puns particular to their late-'80s animated counterparts. At one point, Leonardo orders Shredder to take up his last remaining option for an honorable death and fall on his sword, in the tradition of seppuku ritual suicide. Not once does anyone reference or eat any pizza. It's a pretty far cry from the type of fluffy, commerce-mongering junk that would tail the Turtles later.

The original TMNT comics were surprisingly stark and serious.

While one could rightfully accuse the nascent Turtles story of borrowing from Marvel, the black-and-white art still resonates as unique. Eastman and Laird worshipped legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby, but Kirby tended to draw his heroes as close to human-like as super-people could get, bringing his absolutely implausible characters a wee bit closer to plausibility. With no reason to make their protagonists look like anything that existed in the real world, Eastman and Laird drew the Turtles as absolutely impossible badasses.

It would be a little silly to directly compare the team behind the Turtles to an artist as crucial as Jack Kirby. That said, in the original books, the brawlin' brothers appear quite capable of beating the snot out of many of Kirby's brainchildren... especially Mister Miracle.

But Eastman and Laird weren't exclusively interested in telling tales of mean-spirited Turtles engaged in gritty, urban warfare. Even Raphael — the most pugnacious of the lot — lightens up when an encounter with Punisher proxy Casey Jones shows him the error of being a quick-tempered, violent jerk. And on the final page of TMNT #3, Splinter uncovers a race of benevolent aliens with brain-like bodies known as the Utroms, secretly living in New York City. This revelation sets off a chain of events encompassing transgalactic teleportation, fascist Triceratops stormtroopers, and a C-3PO-esque cybernetic scientist named Professor Honeycutt. With just as many hat tips to Star Wars as the inaugural book had to Daredevil, and without a limited special effects budget, the arc is at least the equal of the Hollywood Industrial Complex's maximum capacity for bonkers. While technically still edgier than any of the Turtles' forthcoming kid-friendly adventures, issues #3 through #7 prove that the Turtles got completely ridiculous well before Eastman and Laird signed any regrettable licensing contracts.

These stories — assembled in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 — play out as if two glorious nerds giddily tossed bits and pieces of their favorite sci-fi and comic lore into a psychic blender. Eastman and Laird could get away with this at the time, because they had no obligation to market action figure accessories, Halloween costumes, or fruit snacks to eight-year-olds. Ironically, the Turtles were more innocent and carefree when they were allowed to bleed, drink beer, and swear. They were also, probably, way more fun than the movie Michael Bay's putting out.